Fujitsu improves its FLEPia color e-paper displays

The best e-readers on the market today still sport a non-color display, but in return you get very long battery life and crisp text almost as if you are reading off a piece of paper.

However, color is always going to be an option users want to have, especially if e-readers are to support colorful children’s books, magazines, or become devices more suited to surfing the web. Fujitsu is one company pushing ahead with color e-paper and it has had a color e-reader on sale in Japan since 2009.

The FLEPia, as it is called, offers an 8-inch display capable of 1024 x 768 XGA and 260K colors. The problem with that first attempt color e-paper device was a lack of brightness, washed out colors, and a very slow refresh. So Fujitsu has gone back to the lab and created a second generation of that same display.

The latest version is a big step forward. The display is thinner and considerably brighter while retaining the 4,096 color capabilities of the previous generation. Fujitsu also switched from Windows CE to Linux for the underlying OS and increased the processing speed of the device which can now achieve a 0.7 second refresh rate. The 40-hour battery life is also expected to be retained.

Here’s an example of the new display next to the pervious generation. It’s clear how much the screen has improved both in terms of brightness and contrast:

While the FLEPis e-reader is still not ready for the mass market, it does show that the future is bright for color e-readers that retain the long battery life and thin, light designs, but add that all important color display.